


ink-dark stars

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Fade to Black, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Twitter, M/M, Memorials, Reincarnation, Sad with a Happy Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos, World of Ruin, at least the first part is, in the second part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 21:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: He has exactly this time left, and he calls it one night, and Prompto still has the ability to surprise him, after all this time.





	ink-dark stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crazyloststar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyloststar/gifts), [pzxce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pzxce/gifts).



It’s not just the endless darkness pressing in on him: he blinks, feels the grinding fatigue in his shoulders and in his hips and all up and down the bones in his back, and it doesn’t make sense to be this tired when he’s spent the past _ten years_ sleeping, but when has his life made sense after all? When has he really been -- pain-free, when has he really known what it was like to live and breathe and think without any burdens thrown onto his shoulders? So why is this moment any different -- why does this make him want to press the heels of his hands to his eyes and fall to his knees and ask for forgiveness?

Oh, he’d tried that already: the awkward expressions the others had worn, at the truck stop, beneath the bright glare of the searchlights. The lines and the scars of Gladio and Ignis and Prompto -- the way their hands had shaken, even as they’d each one of them made contact with him. He’d wanted to touch them. Wanted to make sure that they were real, that they weren’t figments of his imagination, that they weren’t just some sick dream that had bubbled up from crystal-depths and the mocking laughter of the Astrals -- the soundtrack of his sleep. The beat of his own heart, slowing, slowing, like counting down to his own waking, like counting down to his own death.

He jerks awake, and nearly spills sauce all over himself, all over his boots and these strange ornaments he’s wearing. Golden buckles and clasps, the things he’d only ever seen his father wear, all the way down to the brace around his knee that he’s secretly grateful for.

Gladio is looking at him, and Ignis’s head is turned in his direction, and Noctis feels the shamed flush rise high into his cheeks, all the way up to his forehead, and he makes himself meet their eyes until -- there’s someone right in front of him. A slender whipcord body, blocking out the other gazes.

“Come on,” he hears Prompto say, and when there’s a hand held out to him -- he takes it.

He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t have time to ask questions: all he’s got, he thinks, is this night -- day -- what is it really? No one in this group is wearing a timepiece. Time is -- stopped, for just this span. Time until the night breaks and the dawn comes, the minutes the seconds flying past, and he doesn’t waste any more of it -- he squeezes Prompto’s hand and hurries on, and they’re in a drab tiny room when they’ve both stopped moving.

He looks up.

Prompto’s eyes meeting his, straight on; Prompto’s hand locking the door, throwing the deadbolt and the chain into place.

“If we’re inside a secure facility, what’s with the -- ” he says, because he thinks he really want to know, and because he’s almost afraid of the next few hours, the next few moments. 

“It was my idea,” he hears Prompto say. “Every room in this place is a panic room. If it buys people more time, if it delays the enemies long enough -- we’ve been breached before,” and gods, how does he sound so serious and so gentle at the same time, in a way that doesn’t make Noctis want to raise his hackles? Nothing like condescension in those firm words; just the facts, Your Majesty, nothing more. “It’s happened enough times. We’ve saved a few more lives. So it works.”

“Prompto, I,” he begins, and he honestly doesn’t know what to say next.

Shrug, is the first answer he gets. “If you’re going to apologize, do it to the others. I don’t want it, I don’t need it.” For the first time in a very long while, Prompto’s eyes waver -- only for a moment. 

Noctis scrapes the breath back into his lungs when Prompto looks at him again. “Save it for someone who wants to hear it.”

“Why don’t you?”

Ghost of a smile, and the flicker of real life in those eyes. “What did you do to me? And no, don’t tell me you left me. You never did.”

“I actually wasn’t here. I actually didn’t see -- how you got this,” and Noctis steels himself, and reaches out to the faded slash-line descending from Prompto’s temple, to midway down his cheek. The white scar looks like it’s literally carved out some of the freckles that had been in its way. Satellite scars around it, like stabilizing little lines, and it makes him ache for his guess, that someone had tried to literally stitch Prompto back into some kind of wholeness. 

“You were here, and you weren’t here,” is the quiet response. “But -- you were here with me and I couldn’t kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

“I need you to kiss me,” he whispers, shamed again, because he literally has no right to be this selfish or this needy at the very end of the darkness, at the very end of ten long years, and yet he grabs on to Prompto by the straps criss-crossing his chest -- hands curling into desperate fists, white-knuckled, and he keeps his eyes open as they fall closer, closer, the kiss that deepens in the instant after they make contact and Noctis groans, growls, all but throws himself straight into Prompto.

Who is kissing him back, as needy as he is. Hands snaking around him to clutch at the cloth stretched over his back -- he lets out a small grunt as Prompto hauls him close and he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t break the kiss, not until long after his lungs have started burning from lack of air.

“Bed,” he hears Prompto rasp against his mouth.

He looks over his shoulder. There’s a cot, but no pillows, and he’s not even sure he could have fit on the thing when they were starting out on the road, it’s that narrow.

He doesn’t hesitate, though, after looking back to Prompto, after looking back to those expressive eyes.

At least he can still read him: those flaring brightening colors, the thinning rim of blue-violet around those blown pupils, and Noctis could never have said “no” to him back then and he’s not saying “no” now.

But it’s a wrench to step away from him, for the stupid little annoyances of layered jackets, the studs threaded into the shirt-front. 

He doesn’t even want to think about the fact that the trousers fit so damn loosely on him -- just drops all that to the floor and steps out of his shoes and -- “Prom.”

He’s sitting on the bed and he’s taken off everything below the waist. The sleeveless shirt and the much-shrunken gloves -- Noctis nearly starts at his bar-code, that he hadn’t even been hiding to begin with -- the real shock is that Prompto is still wearing a thin layer of black, the mostly opaque material clinging to him like a second skin, covering the exact same area that the other shirt had -- part of his shoulders, his entire chest, nearly all of his stomach.

Standing over Prompto, he reaches out to the upper edge of that last garment -- he lets him, and then he smiles, and Noctis doesn’t recognize him at all. 

Before he can open his mouth and ask -- Prompto is falling forward into him. Muttered words. “I should be apologizing to you.”

With Prompto in this position, Noctis can see where the last layer is covering his entire back.

And the premonition chills him right through to the bone, chills him right down to the words that he tries to say, soft and quiet and fearful anyway: “Prompto? What did you -- ”

“I meant it, when I said: you were here, and you weren’t here, and I had the idea and Ignis yelled at me for an hour straight. And didn’t stop me after all.”

Noctis skims his hands over the black that covers Prompto and -- almost calls the whole thing off.

But Prompto says, “Sit with me,” and he does. He’s helpless, he’s paralyzed, he’s trying to understand and his mind comes up blank every time.

If Prompto minds being crowded on the cot, he doesn’t say: Noctis just watches him turn away again, and reach for the collar that rides high on his back.

“Don’t be mad at me, Noct.”

“How could I -- ”

The words die in his mouth.

He sobs, suddenly, soundlessly, in the emptiness of the room and the scant spaces between himself and Prompto.

He used to like tracing lines into Prompto’s skin, following the random meanders and paths of those freckles scattered far and wide. A sprawl of a galaxy, a hundred thousand stars, all reversed: dark on pale, and they had even amused themselves through the nights made sleepless by homework or nightmares or the plain and simple euphoria of still being alive after a hunt gone wrong.

They’d laughed, back then, Prompto suggesting the silliest twists and turns in the stories they’d made up for each other’s sake.

There is only one story to be told of the lines branded into Prompto’s back now: one single painful story, cursed in every line of it, every needle-drawn edge, every needle-drawn detail. 

Fourteen weapons, and every single one of them reproduced in ink in Prompto’s skin, the details of them so vivid that they wash out the faded freckles even more: and Noctis shivers, reaches out to his own Engine Blade as it’s been tattooed into the center of Prompto’s back. It’s the focal point of the whole piece: and the thirteen Royal Arms radiate from it, beautiful and chilling.

Tears overflow Noctis’s eyes as he leans in, as he kisses the nape of Prompto’s neck. “Prompto why.”

“I don’t know why. I just woke up and I knew I needed to do it. I knew I had to have them on me. In me. I don’t know what the right word is. Gladio and I couldn’t agree. I woke up from a coma and I had been eight months half dead. There’s a scar, it’s not really important, it was only the excuse I gave Ignis,” and Prompto is moving, arm straining to trace a crooked line across his backbone, stopping just shy of his right armpit. “When was it? It was a few years in, I can’t remember. Years before I had the idea to get the whole thing, and years to finish. Wasn’t easy to get all the ink I needed to get all the details.”

“This is -- ”

Prompto won’t let him speak for some reason, saying, “I had all the references staring me in the face all along, you know? I took photos of you and Gladio and Ignis sparring with these things. I took photos of you running through your weapon forms. I had the references, and all I had to do was arrange them. Make sure I’d gotten everything on the right scale. I woke up from my coma and knew I needed to cover my back. 

“Wanted to have you with me. I thought about this. Hurt, too,” and Prompto’s laugh is as jagged around the edges as Noctis’s own shattered heart. “But once I got started I knew I couldn’t quit until it was all done. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I didn’t let it happen, I didn’t let anyone stop me, not until I had the full set.”

“It killed me,” Noctis whispers, now, fearful and small and far too quickly. “Every time I took a Royal Arm -- I wanted to die, after. I wanted to scream at the Kings and Queens, because they’d be in my head, they’d be whispering to me, when I collected their weapons, and all I wanted them to do was shut up.”

“I never hurt that way. I couldn’t possibly know,” he hears Prompto whisper back. “This hurt, too, is all.”

“Why,” he asks again, and this time he gathers Prompto into his arms, and he doesn’t care that this means Prompto will feel how he’s shaking and on the verge of tears. “How could you do this?”

The silence is broken by Prompto’s quiet sob. “Ignis told me. I made him tell me. He’d -- almost destroyed himself, too, trying to look for answers, soon after you’d gone away. I guess he thought it was easier to come to me, because I didn’t know anything -- but I made him regret that. I made him tell me what he knew: and Noct?”

“Prom,” he says, and he lets his tears fall onto ink and skin.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know,” and he’s telling the truth: there’s something wrong about seeing his own curse, his own death and the deaths of all his ancestors, written right here in the skin of the man he loved.

And there is also something incredibly, painfully right about this, and he can’t find the words to tell Prompto, except: “You did this for me.”

Chuckle, sword-edged, spear-sharp. “Only a little bit for you, yeah.”

“Liar,” he says, and he gets a good grip on Prompto’s shoulders, wrenches him back around to face him.

He’d breathe a sigh of relief for not having to see the fucking Armiger in Prompto’s skin, if he weren’t so busy kissing him, and the salt of their shared tears is bitter on Noctis’s mouth, especially as he drinks it in from Prompto’s.

Prompto’s hands at his hips, flexing, and Noctis hisses, and demands, “Hold me here, hold me here, I need you to make me feel that I’m real and you’re real and we’re real and, Prompto please -- ”

“Noct.”

He blinks.

He’s looking down at Prompto, the bright tears, the mouth twisted into a sob and into a smile. The lines in his face, distinct from his scars. The pallor of him, and the shadows of him -- and through it all those eyes, those emotions, shining up at him, shining out at him, and he turns away and muffles a sob in his own shoulder, before leaning back down.

He doesn’t kiss him, not immediately: he says, “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“I asked myself that question too,” is the response. “You could have had anybody. You could have been with anybody, but you picked me: you said I loved you for you.”

“I do. I still do. I always will,” he says, the last promises he’ll ever make.

“You loved me for me, too,” he hears Prompto say. “Even when literally neither of us knew what that was.”

“What you are,” he corrects, and then he does place his fingers over Prompto’s mouth. “Not much time left.”

He knows, he remembers, Prompto protesting those very same words, years and years ago.

Now Prompto just kisses him, sobs into the kiss, pulls him down -- and he knows where this is all going to end, he knows this is all going to hurt them both, scar Prompto for a lifetime and leave him bleeding in all his last hours.

He loses himself in this, anyway, in faint freckles and vivid ink and far too many scar-lines, in the gasps and the cries falling out of Prompto.

*

He wakes up, one morning, and there’s a burning all along his back and -- it’s not the painful kind.

Just the important kind.

Is it a family thing, he wonders, to get all these soul-marks on their backs? His mom’s is a single beautiful bat’s wing, branded deeply into her left shoulder in greenish-black; his cousin Ignis has a strange cat-like animal in the small of his back, dark-brown lines.

His burns all down his spine and he hisses out a long breath through his teeth and -- then, then, the pain fades away as quickly as it had come, and he waits another minute, before he raises his head and hollers, “Anybody home?”

“Noct?” Door into his room, slapped open, crashing into the wall and -- he waves, weakly, at his mother, before pointing to his own back.

“Think it’s here,” he says.

“Oh gods!” she exclaims, and she digs in her pocket for her smartphone; he watches her fumble with its screen for a moment, and then she nods at him and asks, “Please?”

“Okay mom.” He hauls his shirt up and over his head.

Click of a shutter, and -- “Should I be concerned?”

“What the,” and he reaches for his mother’s hand -- holds on to her, and then she’s turning the screen towards him and he inhales, hard. “Holy shit.”

“Not what I said, but that’s what I thought,” she says. “It really is a family thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says, staring at the beautiful sword that’s now marked into his back. Blue-violet lines tracing out the elegant shape of it, the martial grace of it. A sword fit for royalty.

And -- he squeezes his mom’s hand, and says, “I know where mine is.”

He hears her exhale, loudly. “Tell me.”

Track shorts, a shirt gone transparent with sweat, and the exact same image of a sword with a strangely mechanical hilt, branded into sun-kissed freckled skin, visible through the thin material. “He’s in my year. He sits in the back with me in history class. I,” he grins, hides it a moment in the pillow, before looking back at his mother. “I was his first kiss.”

She laughs at him, and he lets his grin grow. “That boy!”

“Yup,” he says, and then he gets up and throws his arms around her. “I told you he felt like home, mom.”

“I always believed you, Noct,” is what she says, and he reaches for his phone and shows her a selfie: himself, off-center -- and next to him, blond hair and heart-shaped stickers hanging precariously off a cheek, and a sweetly prankish smile. 

Eyes the exact color of the sword-lines. 

“Go get him,” she says. “Tell him I’d like to talk to him, too.”

“I will,” and Noct swipes out of the gallery, and performs a speed-dial gesture.

Ring, ring, and then laughter: “Noct? Why do you always have such good timing?”

“I don’t know, Prom,” he laughs back. “Come over, it’s not a problem, it’s nothing wrong, but we have to talk, can you?”

“Well at least you told me not to worry, but -- yeah, worried, coming,” and Prom’s humming a sort of rising victorious tune.

Noct leans into his mother, and listens, and thinks -- it’s time for his life to begin at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


End file.
